Development of a health promotion questionnaire index (HPQI) to measure doktor muda (junior doctor) programme impact on schoolchildren’s oral health knowledge, attitudes and behaviour

Z.Y.M Yusof,N Jaafar

doi:10.22452/adum.vol20no1.3

Abstract

Long term evaluations of impacts of community based health promotion programmes are not an easy or straightforward task to do due to lack of validated and reliable indices. Objective: To develop and test an index to measure schoolchildren?s oral health knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour as a result of a school-based health promotion programme in Malaysia called the Doktor Muda (Junior Doctor) Programme (DMP). Materials and Methods: The index was developed in English based on the DMP module and translated into Malay. The Malay version was tested on 174, 11-12 year old schoolchildren. Psychometric analysis of the index involved content and face validity tests as well as factor analysis, internal and test-retest reliability. Results: Factor analysis yielded 3 factors with groups of items viz. oral health knowledge (OHK), oral health attitudes (OHA) and oral health behaviour (OHB). The Cronbach?s alpha coefficients of the three factors were 0.61, 0.73, and 0.64, respectively. The Kappa coefficients were 0.70, 0.77 and 0.73, respectively (intraclass correlation coefficients = 0.72, 0.70 and 0.78). The final questionnaire comprised 33 items, namely; OHK 11 items, OHA 15 items, and OHB 7 items. Conclusion: The Health Promotion Questionnaire Index (HPQI) to measure the DMP impact on schoolchildren?s oral health knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours was empirically verified to be valid and reliable for use among 11-12 year old Malaysian schoolchildren.

Highlights

Increasing emphasis is being placed upon the evaluation of health promotion (HP) interventions to demonstrate their impact and long term effect on health [1]
It was argued that the DMP effect on health and oral health should be evaluated. This present study focused on the DMP impact on oral health
The present study aimed to develop an index, the Health Promotion Questionnaire Index to measure changes in schoolchildren’s oral health knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour as a result of DMP

Summary

Introduction

Increasing emphasis is being placed upon the evaluation of health promotion (HP) interventions to demonstrate their impact and long term effect on health [1]. In Malaysia, a school-based HP programme called the Doktor Muda (Junior Doctor) Programme (DMP) was introduced in primary schools in the late 1980s [4] It is a smart partnership programme between the Ministries of Health and Education. DMP is a child-to-child peer-led HP programme where a group of schoolchildren called Doktor Muda (DM) or ‘young doctors’ are empowered to give health education and conduct health related activities at school all year long. They act as an agent of change to promote healthy lifestyles to their peers, families, and the community [5]. By 2010, there were 1255 DMP schools with 33,440 trained DM, representing about 20% of primary schoolchildren in Malaysia [6]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion